The Acute Spinal Cord Injury Center program is designed as a multi-discipline approach to the problems concerned with spinal cord injury. These approaches include epidemiological studies of the cause, mortality and morbidity of spinal cord injury; determination of direct and indirect costs of the care and rehabilitation of the spinal cord injured patient; studies of all aspects of the medical care received by spinal cord injured patients to determine if any aspect has significance in the outcome variables of mortality and morbidity; laboratory studies of experimental spinal cord injury and studies of spinal cord anatomy, physiology, pathology and biochemistry to enlarge the data base upon which methods of study and therapeutic concepts may be based, and to determine if any aspects of the function, anatomy or biochemistry of the spinal cord contribute to the morbidity that follows spinal injury.